PT XVI —

XVI. Dibben et al., Applied Process Thought 1 Mark Dibben and Thomas Kelly (eds.), Applied Process Thought I : Initial Explorations in Theory and Research, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought XVI, 2008. (389 p. ; 978-3-938793-75-6 ; 98 €) Process philosophy provides dynamic ways of thinking and speaking about phenomena which are closer to the organic and temporal nature of reality than the more common substantivist, object-centered discourses. Concentrating mainly on the process philosophy developed by Alfred North Whitehead, this series of essays brings together some of the newest developments in the application of process thinking to the physical and social sciences. These essays, by established scholars in the field, demonstrate how a wider and deeper understanding of the world can be obtained using process philosphical concepts, how the distortions and blockages inevitably inherent in substantivist talk can be set aside, and how new and fertile lines of research in the sciences can be opened as a result. As such, this collection represents a significant contribution to the literature of process thought, focusing as it does on the intersection between philosophy and science. In a mutually supportive process through which a more genuine understanding of natural experience in the world is achieved, these essays show how the two disciplines can collaborate intimately —to the enrichment of both. Table of Contents Part 1 : Philosophy 1. Unity Through Divergence : Whitehead’s Answer to Misplaced Concreteness, Isabelle Stengers, Free University of Brussels 2. Mediating the Divide : Process Philosophy in between the ’two cultures’ of modernity, Keith Robinson, University of South Dakota 3.Toward The Unification of Process Philosophy : The challenge posed by Gare’s secular metaphysics to fragmenting influences in Process Philosophy, Glenn McLaren, Swinburne University of Technology 4. From Grown Organism to Organic Growth : From Greek to Whiteheadian Organicism, Michel Weber, Chromatiques 5. Towards a Whiteheadian Critical Theory : Marcuse and Whitehead, Duston Moore, Purdue University at Fort Wayne Part 2 : The Natural Sciences 6. A Whiteheadian Perspective on Nature and Freedom, Gary Herstein, Southern University of Illinois 7. Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Vibrations : Towards a Metaphysics of Light, Bogdan Ogrodnik, University of Silesia 8. Enzymes as Ecosystems : A Panexperientialist Account of Biocatalytic Chemical Transformation, Ross Stein, Harvard Medical School 9. Paramecia and People : Pictorial Ilustrations of Panexperientialism in Biology, Jonathan Delafield Butt & Pierfrancesco Basile (University of Edinburg) 10. The Embodied Mind and Intersubjectivity : Reflections on Autism and the Body-Subject, John Harpur, National University of Ireland, Maynooth Part 3 : The Social Sciences 11. Reconciling Actual Occasions and Organisations : Applying Bracken’s Event-Field Postulate in the Social Sciences, Mark Dibben, Lincoln University 12. Social Science Contributions to the Love-Science Symbiosis, Tom Oord, Northwest Nazarene University 13. Facts and Events : Towards a Whiteheadian Philosophy of History, William Desmond, Trinity College, Dublin 14. A Whiteheadian Theory of Creative, Synthetic Learning and Its Relevance to Educational Reform in China, Ronald Phipps, New York 15. Applying ’Other’ Philosophers : ’New’ Process Thinking in Environmentalism and Education, Arran Gare, Swinburne University of Technology